1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a maintenance device and a recording device, and in particular, to an inkjet recording device which carries out recording by discharging ink onto a recording medium, and to a recording device which has this function and which is used as an output device of a fax machine, a copier, a printer multi-function device, a work station, or the like, and to a maintenance device which is used in the recording device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, the increased popularity of color documents in offices has been extraordinary, and various output devices for color documents have been proposed. In particular, an inkjet method, which enables devices to be made compact and which is inexpensive, is used in various output devices.
A recording head used in the inkjet method is structured from an energy generating means, an energy converting means for converting the energy generated by the energy generating means into ink discharging force, ink discharge openings for discharging ink drops by the ink discharging force, and an ink supply route which communicates with the ink discharge openings and supplies ink thereto. Examples of the energy generating means are a means using an electromechanical converter such as a piezo element or the like, a means which heats the ink by an electricity-heat converting element having a heat-generating resistor so as to generate an air bubble and which discharges an ink drop by generating the air bubble, and the like.
In a recording head using an electricity-heat converting element, because the electricity-heat converting element is compact, the ink discharge openings can be disposed at a high density, and in addition, semiconductor integrated circuit fabricating technology can be used as the technology for manufacturing the recording head. Therefore, a recording head having a large number of highly-precise ink discharge openings can be made to be compact, and can be manufactured at a low cost.
However, currently, the technique which is mainly becoming popular is a printing method called serial scanning which carries out printing line-by-line by reciprocatingly moving a recording head while conveying a recording sheet. This method is compact and inexpensive, but has the drawback that, in order to form an image over the entire sheet, the recording head must be scanned plural times and the printing speed is slow. In order to improve the printing speed, the number of scans must be reduced and the recording head must be made longer. The technique which has pushed this to the limit is a non-scanning printing system which carries out printing by a recording head which has the width of a sheet. This printing system is an inkjet recording device having a recording head which corresponds to the width of a recording sheet and at which a large number of discharge openings are lined-up along a length which is substantially the same as the width of the recording sheet. Recording is carried out by the recording sheet moving with respect to the recording head which is fixed.
In this way, an inkjet recording device, which carries out printing by using a non-scanning-type recording head corresponding to the width of sheets while continuously conveying the sheets, has been proposed in order to improve the printing speed and cope with use in the office.
On the other hand, in the inkjet recording device, in order to keep the ink discharging ability good, when printing is not being carried out, discharging of ink drops (dummy jetting), cleaning of the nozzle surfaces (wiping), preventing drying of the ink (capping), and the like by a maintenance device are necessary. Further, when a state in which printing is not carried out continues over a long period of time, viscosity of ink increases due to drying and the nozzles become clogged. Therefore, the old ink within the recording head must be suctioned (vacuumed) out and discarded. Such maintenance operations must be carried out also on the above-described recording head whose width corresponds to that of the sheets.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 7-246715 (Patent Document 1) discloses, in a label printer having an inkjet head corresponding to the width of the sheet, a structure having a cap at which is formed an edge portion which can surround the periphery of the discharge openings of the head.
However, when a single cap is provided for a single head in this way, even in a case in which it suffices to suction only one nozzle, all of the nozzles of the one head are suctioned, and the amount of ink consumed during this suction becomes large.
Further, JP-A No. 2002-331691 (Patent Document 2) discloses an inkjet recording device provided with a driving mechanism which reciprocatingly drives, along a recording head, a suction device having a cap. In this structure, because the cap is made to contact and suction only the ink discharge openings which should be suctioned, less ink is consumed during this suction.
However, in the structure of Patent Document 2, when suctioning at plural places is carried out, a long period of time is required for the suctioning operation overall.